To Repeat a Life
by Toyu
Summary: The cycle of life and death continues for Reiji Azuma, until he decides to end it with his own hands...


The second time he sees Ein, he has black hair like her, no memories of meeting her before and she attacks him with a knife, her hazel eyes emotionless like a dolls. She trains him, a nameless teen other than a code name like hers, Zwei, and in turn he kills as instructed by the organization they are bound to by force. His memories of his previous life that time return when he touches a passport booklet that he later tears up underneath her astounded gaze, the pages sucked out the window of the car he, now Reiji Azuma drives as they flee from Inferno. After finding her sitting on the side of the motel's bed with a trembling knife pointed at her bared throat, he intervenes, and she asks him to kill her as she is unable to do so herself. Reiji does not, and instead gives her a new name, Elen, and a promise that is more sacred than a wedding vow, the promise of a normal life. However, the escape from Inferno fails, both are captured and are forced on opposing sides of a battle that neither want to fight. Each thinks the other is dead until they see each other once more in front of an elevator, the brief gaze they hold as she steps in wearing a blue sleeveless dress broken by the closing doors that separate them. Reiji sees Ein once more many days later, and realizes that it was her who had shattered the window to the Inferno-Godoh mafia meeting, murdered the two in the alleyway in L. A. where he had left the blonde girl… It was in the same way Reiji knew it was Elen when he finds her on top of the fright crates as the Godoh mafia members were struck down a few moments beforehand. They meet for what he thinks is the final encounter in the abandoned factory separate from time, and escape from Inferno together by traveling _Southbound_ instead of north.

As an old man he lays there next to her still-small body, staring at the wrinkles and silver hair that adorned her once young face. Reiji smiles, as he remembers her crying a few years back just as hard as she had on their wedding day in the distant past when she discovered her first old hair on an unageing body, and again when the first wrinkle appeared. The other ladies in the hospice cluck their tongues in sympathy and surprise, when they give their condolences or complain to the nurses within earshot of Elen, she says the same thing to both. "I cry because Reiji _likes_ them, and I'm happy enough to appreciate them that I do cry." Reiji only tightens the hand that held his lover's in her sleep as he senses the person enter the room, a phantom mask reflected in the window behind Elen as the assassin approaches the bed. He closes his tired eyes and exhales once as the disguised nurse stops in front of the bed, a syringe in each hand full of the liquid that allowed old folks to pass on in a drugged sleep. "Can you kill us both… at the same time, assassin?" he asks, and Elen's eyes slowly crack open, confusion, pained sorrow then understanding mixed with simple acceptance shining in them with the last tears she would shed in this life. Reiji inhales as the needle enters him, watching as the same thing is done to Elen, whose eyes had already closed with a soft smile on her aged face. His own close for the last time, and Reiji Azuma's soul passes on into the void only to be born again, memories dormant, in the body of a newborn with the same name.

* * *

In his second life, he still has black hair, a sister that did not exist in his past, a different haired girlfriend, and a mother who worries a bit more than his past one. He awakens upon receiving the airplane tickets and it feels as if it's a dream, a nightmare that he does not want to repeat. Reiji travels to L. A. half-in doubt as he does it a month ahead of his past life so everything should be fine… It's his dormant skills that allow him to realize where the bullets that murder the four people, two bodyguards, one mafia boss or gang leader and his girl, in front of him are coming from. He sees her, Ein on the other end of the sniper rifle and in terror he flees, because he does not want to have a repeat of the nightmare… and yet he does in a sense, as some things are similar to the past life that he remembers through the drug, and others are different enough for him to wonder if his past life was a dream and not this one. Zwei he is called and trained by a girl named Ein once more, a few of the missions are the same, his inauguration mission into this life's Inferno is not one of them. The following mall mission is similar to his first, although he is worried about the sheer number of people walking around and lurking in suits that just scream bodyguards. The moment it all goes down the unfamiliar path is when Ein kills the target and afterwards a guard during their normal 'civilian' escape. The guards give chase, and Ein is shot when she dives back towards the armed foes for the necklace he had bought her as an anniversary gift for the time they were married in his first life. Reiji dives after her, swiftly shooting the guards that had dared to hurt her after all the pain she and he had gone through in his first life.

Ein does not remember the past they shared if she does remember anything, and it shows plainly on her surprisingly emotional face after he attempts to wake her up from a nightmare that had her groaning and moaning in her sleep before the mall mission. He is greeted with a gun pointed at his head and a face full of fear, fear that he is certain is reflected on his own as this Ein reminds him far too much of his Elen, but now his wife's expression was one of constant sorrow and pain. After the incident he asks her if she remembers her past, if she did, she hid it better than her emotions from him. It was another reason why he had bought her the gift, to test and see if she did remember the date from his first, and if not, it would mark another beginning for her and him. During the night after the mall mission, when he returns home from a nighttime stroll while thinking on what to do, it's Lizzie and an ambush of at least ten armed Inferno agents that greet him in the loft, Ein having left with Scythe, who had betrayed Inferno. The events of his past had happened far too quickly, and it's this that most likely disorients him during the battle among familiar freight crates, hunting Scythe, fighting Ein, not at a harbor but inland this time. He raises his gun and she raises hers, Reiji fully ready to end it; knowing that Ein will fire to protect her Master, fires his own. She does not, and explosions go off around them as he is left wondering _why, why did you not fire, Ein?_ Wounded, she raises herself from the ground beyond the pile of fallen ceiling and crackling flames, a smile on her face. He then knows why, she can sense it at least, the bond that he has worked so hard to forge with her in this life, but that bond is meaningless as a large slab falls where she had been standing. Reiji barely remembers kicking and screaming himself hoarse, her name the only thing to leave his lips as he is dragged away by the few surviving soldiers, forced to live when the only thing he wants is to die. He does, so very many blood stained missions later, by his own hand surrounded by the corpses of those whom he had just killed, Inferno's control of the American underworld now complete.

* * *

Upon being born into his third, Reiji Azuma remembers the events of his past two lives, and does not go to America at all when he receives the plane ticket, college funding for the trip among other things in the mail. Instead he hides them in an old box that he places in his closet underneath some old clothing. He leaves it there as he attempts to live a normal civilian life after deeply apologizing to his parents and the school board while casually mentioning to his friends that the items would have been a waste on him anyway… Reiji is haunted by the smile of Ein just before the rock falls on top of her in his second life, by her pained gaze over the gun's barrel pointed at him as she tells him that a world without him is a world that she does not want to live in, something that occurred in his first life. His friends, classmates, and family notice the brief, not quite fully hidden flashes of pain, loss and sorrow etched deeply on his face when he thinks no one is looking. When they ask him about it he does not answer, for there was not a way to tell them in order for them to understand the ghosts that haunt him. In this life, Reiji dies an old, broken man, lamenting his choice to do nothing, as if the events of Phantom being shown on the news did not involve him. It was because they did involve him with his choice to do nothing to prevent them, the constant sea of guilt-stained blood that covered his hands follows him into the grave and his next life.

* * *

It's in his fourth life that the events of his first life repeat for a while… but Reiji abandoned Ein there in the factory, as she lay bleeding from an unclosing wound. He pleads amnesia and insanity at the local asylum and returns to Japan… desperate for an end to the dream that does not end…

* * *

In his fifth, Reiji is driven by guilt for his actions in his past and primarily the good memories of his first two to travel once more to America. In a familiar alleyway, the black-haired Azuma meets a black-haired Ein, the body of a very dead Kirk Edwards lying forgotten nearby. His repeats his fourth with minor differences, the choosing of a different gun, knife training instead of focusing on guns, ignoring the female manipulator as she walks away instead of calling her back, banging his head against the bathroom stall door in the mall while in doubt of his plan to help Ein, instead of the hallway in front of an elevator as she disappears from view like she did in his first… Changes of the small trivial things that fail to prevent Ein from once again bleeding before him in the factory do nothing major to the timeline, but this time he saves her with a cracked smile of acceptance on his face. It fails to keep her from returning to L.A. knowing that she is against impossible odds and that she will die but she does so anyway, driving towards her death as he _Lets Her Go_ , the story of all his past lives resting heavily on his tongue unsaid and unheard by anyone other than himself.

* * *

It's a couple dozen or so lives after his fifth that he decides to just _fuck this_ , Cloud Strife style because he has acquired an in-ground hatred of the boredom with body guarding, meetings, and other Inferno or phantom related stuff from all the same mundane repeats. Knowing what would occur to the point of memorizing the number of times someone's mouth goes up and down while talking in yet another meeting might have caused Reiji to do some research into the subject of time-travel. Primarily by reading various fictitious stories that have time travel and crazier settings than his own does help with his boredom, and gives him new ideas to break the loop by attempting what the time-traveler does to pass the time as well. None of the changes he makes in all the different lives work to end the loops, although he decides, after the small voice in the back of his head states that he _should leave Ein to die_ , to just _Stop Running_. His decision might have had something with him needing to pause in his operation to save her as the memories decide to swarm him at that blasted moment… but it was still his choice to do so. He knows what he has to do, as in all of his lives there is one constant, one person who is always there at the beginning and sometimes at the end. With a half-crazed bark of laughter, he picks up the sleeping bag from where it has laid unused for quite some time, unzips it, lays the blanket-wrapped Ein in it, zips it up around her, and then carries the sleeping-body-bag outside to the back of the Taurus.

It's rather easy to spray the empty trunk with a borrowed Aug assault rifle until Reiji is satisfied that there are slightly more breathing holes than trunk, into which he places the sleeping-turned-body bag with a still living body resting quite literally inside of it. He drives back to the loft fully intending to pick Ein-Elen-Eren up from the trunk, walk inside and place her on the bed inside. Reiji does so with relative ease, noting that the Inferno agents appearing from nearby alleyways and the black cars driving up to surround the building from the loft's curtained window. "It will all be over soon…" He tells himself and the sleeping princess on the nearby bed as he releases the edge of the curtain to bend down and lightly brush his lips with her own. There is no change in Ein's breathing, although he knows that she can hear him, her numerous repeats of 'Mr. Reiji Azuma' echoing in his head as he drags a wooden chair to the hallway and leaves it there. He then walks back into the loft, snags the folded newspaper on the coffee table in passing along with the nearest ranged weapon he can grab as he makes his way back to the hallway and chair. He sits and waits, noting that the date on the newspaper is the same day that he had died in his previous life. Reiji smirks at this as he listens to the not so subtle sound of Inferno agents coming up the stairs, before the roar of gunfire and darkened silence escort him into what he prays is a final death.

* * *

In his final life he has natural brown hair, and encounters the same reporter from his first life. He has done this so many times that he knows that somehow Ein is the key to ending the loops, and she appears, wearing a mask and holding a far too familiar weapon. Her hair reminds him of the color it sometime appeared as in his second life, a warm grey that was more pronounced and permanent in this life. He silently swears to protect her even as he flees her, acting as a panicked civilian who knew nothing when forced into his situation would act and sets up an ambush with a long piece of metal lying nearby. Reiji stares into her strangely blue eyes as he descends from where he had been hiding with the pipe, a memory of the Ein in his second life echoing before him. In a sense, this life is a combination of all his previous ones, little things that only occurred in certain lives that he recognizes from his multi-lived past. The memory of his death in his eighth life briefly flashes before him as Elen sits on top of him, revealing the small scars on her body that served as physical reminders to him of the promise that he made in this life, the first and several others in a certain motel room.

The bullet enters him from behind, piercing his heart as he waits in the factory for the presence he senses to kill him as he had betrayed Inferno and had no reason left to live, certain that Ein, like Cal, was dead. Then seeing her as he falls, her brown sad eyes staring down at his dying body as she speaks, her words distant and echoing to his failing mind. "Reiji… Azuma..." She looks away, only a trace hint of sadness in her near-emotionless voice, as if reflecting on the past… or herself. "Poor… boy… Emptiness is fine… Heartlessness is fine… I don't care… if my heart freezes…"

 _Ah… I've scarred… even… you… Elen… sor…ry…_

The memory ends, and he removes the tears from her face as she embraces him while making his final promise that he was rarely able to in most of his past lives, to take her away from Scythe. Reiji does so, and they travel south, cross the border to Mexico before traveling to the Philippines, and then from there, the pair eventually reach Japan. When Cal reappears two years later, he still has a look upon his face as if he has seen a ghost, because in more ways than one, Cal was a ghost to Reiji, a ghost of Inferno, of death, of past failures in his numerous lives, of a former love that he must deny. He kills her again, and it hurts just as much as it did the first time in his sixth life, and the few times he has had to do so after that life. Scythe falls by Elen's hand, something that never occurred with him alive or not dying previously at this point in time.

Reiji Azuma knows that Inferno will send an assassin after them, they did in the first and several others where he had fallen before escaping, before keeping any of his promises to any of his four lovers after his first life. The trail they leave is easy enough to follow, as Inferno also has information on Scythe's past that could be used in finding the two. Reiji senses the assassin in Mongolia, the old face of the man behind him and Elen in a cart reminiscent of his own at the end of his first. The old face of death is cautious when approaching the two, observing them for several years before dying himself of natural causes and old age, unable to complete the mission Inferno assigned him. Another near copy of Reiji upon his death bed in his first life is sent in, and by then both Reiji and Elen are well into their fifties, having made many memories together underneath the setting sun of Mongolia. Reiji accepts the bullet that enters his heart from behind, smiling as he embraces death, glad that he was able to repeat most of his first life with Elen, along with bits and pieces of the lives that followed him into his final grave.


End file.
